White Privilege Myth Harms PolAms Pienkos1

For Your Freedom Through Ours: Polish American Efforts on Poland’s Behalf, 1863-1991, by Donald E. Pienkos. 2018

“White Privilege” Myth Applied To Polish Americans. Confronting Anti-Polonism and Holocaust Supremacism—Then and Now

This comprehensive work details the life of Poles in America going back to colonial times. Much biographical and historical information is included. FDR’s lies told to Charles Rozmarek, at the time of the Yalta betrayal of Poland, are featured. The texts of speeches by US Presidents (e. g., Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Reagan, etc.), regarding Poland and Polish Americans, are also included.

ROMAN DMOWSKI AMONG AMERICA’S POLONIA

Generations of early immigrants participated in the struggle for Poland’s resurrection. Pienkos comments: “There were several other reasons why [Roman] Dmowski and his supporters would continue to enjoy support in Polonia after 1893. Aside from his stress upon non-violent resistance as the most promising means of eventually gaining independence, a position which resonated well in America, Dmowski’s commitment to social uplift and work with the peasant population and his identification with Catholicism in helping shape Polish culture were greatly appreciated by the emigration in the United States…” (p. 39).

IDENTITY POLITICS SLIGHTS POLISH AMERICANS, EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE IN NO SENSE PRODUCTS OF SOME KIND OF “WHITE PRIVILEGE”

American efforts, during the Civil Rights era, to ban discrimination, had an unfortunately ironic effect on Poles. Pienkos writes: “In the early 1960s, Polish Americans, themselves the victims of genuine discrimination in their own efforts to advance themselves over the years, had applauded Federal actions to penalize prejudicial conduct…At the same time, most objected to affirmative action as an unfair type of `reverse discrimination’ which lumped them and other ethnic Americans into an otherwise undifferentiated but somehow privileged category of `Whites’…Now, only prejudices of a racial or sexual character seemed to trouble the Government.” (p. 159).

POLISH-AMERICANS SUBJECT TO POLONOPHOBIA AND HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM

In recent decades, Polish Americans also faced the challenges of anti-Polonism. PolAm organizations confronted the Polack joke syndrome, and the tendency of Holocaust materials to elevate Jewish suffering above that of others, and to ignore or minimize Polish suffering.
Popular Holocaust materials themselves had an unmistakably anti-Polish slant. Pienkos comments: “General criticisms of `Polish anti-Semitism’, furthermore, showed America’s nearly total ignorance of Poland’s history…American-born Poles were also deeply offended by the anti-Semitism charge. Indeed, Polish Americans who had been living in the United States at the time of World War II could well wonder why they were being singled out for such hostile characterization.” (p. 161).

[The informed reader will quickly realize that the problem persists to this day. Note the constant mendacious media references to “Polish death camps”, to mythical Holocaustspeak constructs such as “Polish complicity in the Holocaust”, and much more.]

This work overlaps that of an earlier work by Donald E. Pienkos. See the Peczkis review of PNA Centennial History of the Polish National Alliance of the United States of North America.